Shapeshifter
by Nightscrawlearth
Summary: <html><head></head>No longer Warlock, Darren has problems recognizing himself as a human and tries to grasp how he has changed.</html>


Darren sat with his head in his hands, ignoring the squealing trolleys chasing each other around his bed. They d given him one of those medical gowns to wear, put a couple of stitches in his head and it turns out that with the nose he d only separated the cartilage from the bone, so it had just been a simple (and painful) case of cracking it back into place.

He looked at his hands, his arms, covered in light bruises and scrapes from his fall, the muscles were thick and when he poked them they felt solid, he looked down at his legs, they were covered in mud and equally as scraped and bruised, he stretched them out and winced as the twinges ... yeah, he could remember pain now, and remember why he didn t miss it.

Gingerly ... he brought his hand up to his face, carefully feeling along the swollen nose, lips, cheeks, ears and hair ... it felt subtly different, had his appearance changed at all? There was a mirror on the opposite wall ... maybe he should go ... check it out?

He put his hands down either side of him, pushing himself carefully up off the bed, feeling his muscles move, the blood rushing through his veins, air going in and out of his lungs ... he felt so ...

So alive, and he wasn t sure if that was a good or a bad thing.

He managed to doge the happy trolleys and stood in front of the mirror, bracing himself against the wall as he tried to focus on the mirror ... he d been short-sighted as a kid, bad enough to need glasses, obviously he hadn t outgrown that. He leaned in closer until the image swam into focus and then gasped at what he saw.

A complete stranger staring back at him.

Darren shut his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to ignore the stabbing pains from his face as he did so, Come on Kent, pull yourself together soldier, he hissed before looking back.

Well, not a complete stranger, he blinked as he looked at himself, tilting his head to the side and watching his reflection do the same. After spending so many years in the Phalanx in his techno-organic form, he d not really had much of an idea as to what he really should look like, a guy did a long of changing between the ages of thirteen and eighteen after all, so he s just made himself look like how he wanted to look, and that look was skinny punk kid, copying all his features from his father subconsciously so that he ended up looking like his time-lost twin. You could still see his father there ... but there was a lot of his mom too. The face was shaped differently, the nose ... looked bigger, but maybe (hopefully) that was just where it was swollen from being broken, some of his father was still seen in his chin however and his eyes were still the same shape and lively hazel they d always been.

He ... he didn t look bad, he peered closer, he looked older though, the way his face had broadened out, stress lines around his eyes and on his forehead, ... Front line action, he muttered to himself, he d seen war age many a fresh faced eighteen year old into someone who looked more like they were in their thirties, ... great.

His eye s moved higher and then widened when they alighted on his hair, Oh, what! he demanded. What he d assumed was his mohawk just flopping down from lack of hair-gel turned out to be something a bit more sinister. He had an emo fringe!

Darren ran his hand through his hair, feeling it, it had grown out slightly, no longer buzz-cutted but still pretty short on both sides ... but a little longer on the top, squinting at his reflection he pulled the longer parts at the top up, okay, he still had a bit of his mohawk left, but it was greatly reduced, and fringe! The Fringe! Darren s hands clawed in his short hair and his reflection gave him a lost expression, At ... at least it s still red though? Well ... red and black, he had to give the reality warping field that, it had done a good dye job.

Darren took another deep breath and patted down his chest, before he d been skinny but toned under his shifted clothing, now ... well, he was a bit more then toned, there was a definite six-pack under there, his shoulders were wider too, also built up, he d gone from skinny to stocky and he was pretty sure he was slightly taller too, he was pretty sure that was from mom s side of the family to ... the build that was, the muscles tone, to look at it logically, must have been from the military, he looked like a lot of the other grunts back on base.

Darren closed his eyes and leant his head against the mirror, stuck in a body he was unfamiliar with and no powers? Okay ... he could deal with this, he was a solider, he had to get off his ass and stop feeling sorry for himself and ... and check the others were okay, find out what Kevin had done to them and then find a way to fix it. He ... he had searches to arrange, he should go up to the computer room and get to work ... he should ... do something, anything to take his mind off the fact that he didn t think it was just a case of losing his powers like say ... Bobby had done after Danger had fried him.

He looked at the blood still caked on his hands from earlier, his own blood ... he didn t have blood. No, he had a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach that what Kevin had done to them ran far deeper, and more personally violating, then that.


End file.
